


the monster manual

by frak-all (or_ryn)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tabletop Gaming, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo has terrible RPG habits, Ben Solo is a Work In Progress, Crack Treated Seriously, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, F/M, Finn is a Fighter, Gen, Neeeeeerds, Rey is a Monk, Romance, Rose is a Wizard, and Poe is obviously the DM, and throws tantrums when he rolls poorly, roleplaying, then maybe also roleplaying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-12 05:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15333222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/or_ryn/pseuds/frak-all
Summary: "The map. Where is it?”“I don’t know,” Rey says, lying through her teeth.“Ah, but youdo. You know something, Scavenger. Don’t bother denying it.”Rey considers the man across from her a long, hard moment, then turns to Poe. “Yeah, I’m going to ignore him and start rifling through my pack for dinner.”“Sure,” Poe laughs. He glances across the table. “That all?”Ben Solo narrows his eyes.“Insight check.”Dungeons & Dragons AU: Kylo Ren is a Vengeance Paladin with an overly involved backstory, Ben Solo is the worst kind of roleplayer, and Rey is just trying to figure out how this whole game works without strangling anyone.





	1. (roll for initiative)

**Author's Note:**

> A friend mentioned this AU idea in passing, and my brain short-circuited for a full minute. I'm planning to have fun with this one, y'all.
> 
> Shout-out to [albabutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/albabutter/pseuds/albabutter) for looking over a draft of this chapter. Apparently she doesn't actually play D&D and just reblogs 5e things on Tumblr for me. lol whoops. She's assured me this chapter is still intelligible even if you know nothing about Dungeons & Dragons.

“The map. Where is it?” 

“I don’t know,” Rey says, lying through her teeth.

“Ah, but you _do._ You know something, Scavenger. Don’t bother denying it.”

Rey considers the man across from her a long, hard moment, then turns to Poe. “Yeah, I’m going to ignore him and start rifling through my pack for dinner.”

“Sure,” Poe laughs. He glances across the table. “That all?”

Ben Solo narrows his eyes. _“Insight check.”_

 

*

 

He’s about to get slapped.

She’s only just met him, he’s a longtime acquaintance of Poe’s, and he’s a guest in her home, but he’s about to get slapped.

Or punched.

Or pelted in the face with the seventeen different kinds of dice Finn had given her that morning.

Instead of falling to any number of those temptations, though, Rey merely reaches for her beer with a steady hand and ironclad poker face.

She takes a healthy sip of it—Narragansett, not the _fifteen_ dollar sixpack Ben had brought with him, _Jesus Christ_ —and concentrates on how good it tastes. How refreshing it is. How dearly she wishes she could dump the entire thing over Ben’s obnoxiously complex character sheet.  

Rey swallows and shoots a discreet glance to her roommates, relieved to find they’re doing no better at dealing with this nonsense than she is.

Next to the secondhand Player’s Handbook that had prompted this whole evening, Finn is grappling his mechanical pencil in a white-knuckled death-grip. He exhales sharply through his nose, and his nostrils flare.

Rose’s ire seems positively cold by comparison. It’s a determined kind of demeanor Rey has only seen from her kind-hearted roommate maybe a handful of times before.

It’s no surprise that Rose is the first of them to speak.

“Rey’s never played D&D before, Ben,” she says, like this should mean something to him.

Ben shrugs.

“Kylo isn’t here to make friends,” he says, pushing his glasses up his nose again. “He needs to find the map, and Kira is withholding information from the party.”

Finn scoffs.

Rose frowns.

And Rey—

Rey doesn’t say anything.

Because Ben may be an asshole, but he’s not wrong.

Rey’s character Kira is _absolutely_ withholding information.

It’d been part of the character backstory she’d worked out with Poe. The map. Her reluctance to leave. Her willful mistrust.

And Ben’s recent insight check—a _twenty-three_ at level one, which seems unfairly high—just about revealed all of it. At least to Ben.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the premature character revelation had been immediately overshadowed by the shitty means Ben used to acquire it. Apparently, making aggressive rolls against other player characters isn’t good form in RPGs.

Not that Rey would really know. Like Rose so succinctly put it, she’s never played one before.

Initially, she’d agreed to start—and help host—Dungeons & Dragons because of Finn, and only because of Finn. But after an evening with Poe developing Kira’s background and rolling her character stats, she’d secretly thought it might end up being kinda fun.

She’d even stayed up after Poe left to add to Kira’s backstory.

Kira (no last name) is a half-elf monk from a tiny desert town. She’s a bit of a hermit, penniless and struggling, without many concrete ties, but she’s also naturally quick-witted and street smart. Those street smarts come from her high wisdom modifier, the stat Poe’d said to give her highest roll to—the stat that apparently made Kira observant as hell, too.

(Observant enough to spot a broken automaton in a vast expanse of sand. Observant enough to find a small, foreign chunk of metal among its intricate workings. Observant enough to perceive the rising thread of darkness in her tiny town, and keep her damn mouth shut.)

Rey hadn’t roleplayed before, and when she’d been making Kira, Poe had also advised her to build out traits that were either close to real life or along the lines of a familiar fictional character.

(Kira is good with machines. Kira doesn’t trust easily. Kira’s only character bond is with FN-2187.)

Obviously, Rey’d picked real life.

It meant that when Kira’d decided not to trust an ill-tempered, self-righteous character like Ben’s—Kylo Ren, the human Vengeance Paladin, whatever _that_ meant—Rey hadn’t found it too terribly difficult to roleplay.  

Kylo is an asshole and a bully, and she’s known too many of both in her life. They are not worth her time.

And the player behind the character? He’s likely those things too.

He’s also oblivious, if his ignorance of the table’s hostile atmosphere is anything to go by. Oblivious or uncaring.

As if to prove her point, Ben turns to Poe after reading whatever the man had just texted him—information about Kira’s background, surely—and runs a hand through his dark wavy hair. He nods, as if coming to a decision.

“Kylo is going to try and knock Kira unconscious.”

It’s said plainly, like he’s commenting on the weather.

He closes his mouth.

The table _erupts_.

“ _Seriously?_ ” Finn says, throwing his hands up. He skips Ben entirely in favor of yelling straight at Poe. “You can’t just sit by and let him get away with this shit! Poe, come on!”

Simultaneously, Rose turns to Ben, flabbergasted. “You’re going to openly _attack_ a member of your own party?”

Ben doesn’t so much as blink.

“You’re not in this scene, Tico,” he says dismissively. “And it’s what Kylo would do in the situation.” He turns back to Poe. “Well?”

From behind the DM screen, Poe scrubs a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ, Ben,” he mutters.  “We’re only an hour into the first session. Are you sure?”

Ben nods. “It’s what Kylo would do,” he repeats firmly.

“Okay, then,” Poe sighs. “Rey, roll a perception check.”

“Why?” Ben snaps. “Kira’s back is turned.”

“I’m not going to just _give_ you a surprise round, you idiot,” Poe snaps back. “You know how this game works. You can’t just say something you want and have it happen. There are rules.”

Ben looks visibly frustrated, but he doesn’t vocalize it further.

Poe shakes his head, exhales deeply, and turns to Rey. “You good?”

In other words, do you need help?

Rey looks down at her own overly complicated character sheet and the piles of unfamiliar dice scattered across the table.

No.

No, she does not need help.

“One second,” she murmurs, fingers searching through the dice. She finds eight-sided ones and ten-sided ones and twelve-sided ones and _three_ -sided ones and—

In her periphery, she sees Ben lean forward. “It’s the twenty-sided die,” he says, gesturing with a large hand, and Rey is _so close_ to slapping him.

“I gathered that, thanks,” she spits, and refuses to feel bad as Ben retracts his hand like she’s _actually_ slapped him.

She’d tried to be nice to this man. She really had. But he’d been _nothing_ but patronizing since he’d arrived.

The first words out of his mouth hadn’t been, _Hi, I’m Ben_ , or _Nice to meet you, Rey. Thanks so much for having me over._

No. Rey’d opened the front door, introduced herself with an eager smile, and Ben had only stared at her blankly. Stared at her blankly, then furrowed his brow, pushed his glasses up his nose, and said, _Character accents aren’t recommended for first-time players, you know._

Rey had been so put off by that—by his absolute _gall_ —that she could only blink at him, slack-jawed, essentially trapping them both in the doorway.

Thankfully, Poe’d driven with Ben, and had therefore followed close behind him, overhearing the entire exchange. In typical Poe fashion, he hadn’t batted an eye. He’d only scoffed, reached up to cuff the much taller man across the back of the head in what looked like a well-practiced gesture, and said, _That’s her actual accent, dumbass._

It hadn’t gotten better from there.

“Here, Peanut,” Finn says, reaching across the large round table to give her a bright blue d20. “Use this one. It’s lucky.”

Rey accepts it with a strained smile.

She shakes the die in her hand, then drops it to the table with a flick of her wrist. The blue die summersaults a few times, clattering across the poorly varnished wood, and then it stills—fucking her over entirely.

Even she knows what _that_ means.

“Natural one,” she says reluctantly.

Finn groans.

Rose huffs.

Poe winces.

And Ben? Ben smiles with absolute _glee_.

What a fucking child.

Poe waves his hand. “Okay, fine. Rey, Kira’s so overcome with hunger she forgets Kylo’s presence entirely, like the time we took you to the farmer’s market and lost you to the free samples for half an hour.” Poe waits a moment, then sighs again. “Go ahead and roll for Kylo, Ben.”

Ben is smirking slightly now. Immediately, he plucks out a solid iron die that looks heavy, authentic, like it could’ve been smelted by an actual blacksmith.

He rolls it in his large hand, closes his fingers around it, kisses his fist for luck, then drops the d20 in the wooden dice tray he’d brought over. Eyes fixed intently on the spinning metal object, he takes a deep breath, then he actually pumps his hand in the air when it settles, letting out a small noise of victory as he does. Rey cannot _believe_ this man.  

“Eighteen plus three,” he says quickly. His eyes flick over to Rey. “Twenty-one,” he adds a second later, like she doesn’t know how to count.

“Yeah,” Rey says, not even bothering to look at her character sheet. “That hits.”

“Alright, Ben,” Poe says slowly, looking like he’s regretting both the last twenty minutes of this game and the last twenty years of his friendship with this man. He spreads his hand in a beckoning gesture. “Roll for damage.”

 

*

 

Kira falls unconscious, but hey—at least Ben is adamant that Kylo catches her before she hits the ground, right?

Right?

 

*

 

“You’re going to have to uninvite him, Poe.”

They’re at a bar after work. It’s a Monday, and the place is practically empty, because, again, it’s a Monday. But they couldn’t very well have had this conversation after Sunday’s session with Ben in the room. He’d ridden with Poe, after all.

Poe sighs, like he’d known this was coming. And he probably did. He’s a smart guy.

“Look, I’ll talk to him, okay?”

“Poe,” Finn says again slowly, shaking his head. “He _interrogated_ Rey’s character. Tied her up, rolled intimidate, and _interrogated_ her—in the _first_ _session_. That is objectively fucked, even for Ben.”

Poe cradles his head in his hands. “I _know,_ ” he says. “I know it was bad.”   

Rose leans forward, frowning. “You said he was an experienced player and that he was looking to leave his old play group because they were quote, “toxic,” unquote.” She pauses. “Are you sure he wasn’t the toxic one?”

Poe sits up and lets out a deep breath. “Listen, I’ve known Ben since I was a kid. Our parents go way back, and we played 2nd Edition together when it first came out. He’s just picked up some bad tabletop habits recently. I’ll talk to him.”

Finn shakes his head again. “That’s not good enough, dude. A bad habit is talking over other players. A bad habit is staring at your phone during someone else’s turn. This? So much worse than a bad habit.”

Rose is nodding along, and has been nodding along, but a second after Finn stops talking, she pauses. Tilts her head. “Rey, what do you think?”

Finn and Poe both blink. Even though they’d been talking _about_ her, it’s like her two guy friends had forgotten she was even there.

What _does_ she think?

She thinks she’s angry.

She thinks she’s never going to like Ben Solo very much.

She thinks everyone deserves a second chance.

She looks at Poe. “You’ll talk to him?”

Poe’s shoulders relax. _“Yes,”_ he says, relieved. “Ben’s just bad at reading social situations sometimes, and he’s going through a bit of a rough patch, but _he’s trying_. He’ll get better. And he really does know the rules of D &D backwards and forwards. He can help the party out.”

Rey grabs a handful of the bar’s free pretzels like they’re a lifeline. “Okay,” she says. “Just, you know, tell him not to be such a dick, maybe? Isn’t that supposed to be the number one rule in these kinds of games? I looked it up.”

“Yeah,” Poe agrees quickly, sparing her a small but genuine smile. “It totally is. And I totally will.” He tilts his head. “So we’re good?”

Under the table, a rush of something passes Rey’s leg, and she hears Finn grunt softly. She whips her head over, but Rose’s face is serene. Finn grumbles something under his breath, but it’s unintelligible. Quiet.

Rey nods. “If you talk to him, yeah. We’re good.”

“I will,” Poe agrees immediately. He swirls his glass of wine in his hand and sends Rey a brighter, wider smile. This one is typical Poe—teasing and magnetic and more than a touch unruly. “How about that natural twenty you rolled against Kylo, though, huh? I thought Ben was going to freak when your insight was high enough to pull out part of his backstory.”

Rey laughs.

That _had_ been a pretty cool moment. A well-timed thrill and much-needed karmic fuck you _._

She smiles back, fiddling with the pretzel bowl. “That was pretty good,” she admits, sheepish.  

To her left, Finn lets out a dark chuckle. “No, it was _killer_.” He slings an arm around Rey’s shoulder. “Just wait til you roll a nat twenty in combat, Peanut. Double damage is _sick_.”

“It really is,” Rose chimes in, looking almost nostalgic.  

“I’m looking forward to it,” Rey says, and finds she means it.

And that, they figure, is that.

 

*

 

And it is.

The next week, Ben has to cancel last minute, which none of them are too broken up about. The show goes on just fine without him, thanks to some quick shuffling around from Poe. They defeat eight goblins and a bugbear, meet a fast-talking NPC that Rey falls absolutely in love with, and level up at the end of the session.

Level two means Kira gets ki points and can do cool monk shit. It’s awesome.

She finds herself warming up to the game. Looking forward to it, even.

 

*

 

The week after that, Ben has Kylo Ren thrust his greatsword through the fast-talking NPC’s chest within ten seconds of their first interaction, and Rey fucking loses it.


	2. - charm person -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's my [birthday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPqaG8sVDE) today, so here's a present for you all.
> 
> spoiler alert: it's gratuitous ben solo angst. hope you enjoy it half as much as i do.

****Ben’s crashing in Poe’s spare bedroom while he figures some things out.

By that, he means coming to grips with the fact that for most of his adult life he’s been isolated from the people who care about him, and repeatedly hurt, and how none of that really excuses most of the shitty fucking choices he’s made along the way.

By that, he means picking through his personality like it’s a script that desperately needs debugging while somehow holding out the naive hope that when he puts the damn thing back together again, it’ll work, it’ll run properly, and he’ll come out the other side as a whole and actual person.  

By that, he means lots and lots of therapy.    

It’s an embarrassing state of affairs, having to reinvent yourself at thirty-one.

And it’s work. So much actual, hard, honest _work_.

But it could be worse, he supposes. He could be living at his mother’s house. In his eerily preserved childhood bedroom, instead of the tastefully decorated spare room of a friend he’d summarily ignored for close to a decade.

It could be worse. But not by much.

(Not that he couldn’t afford a place of his own, of course. He’s got an emergency fund. Hell, he’s got a _trust_ fund. And the freelance work he’s cobbled together has been lucrative enough, though its primary purpose is to keep his mind busy more than his wallet full. It’s just that his therapist asked if he’d considered looking for a roommate in that calm, quiet way of hers, insinuating that Ben might fall back into old, self-destructive patterns without one. Not in so many words, of course, but.)

Anyway.  

Between freelancing and painstakingly commenting out his own error-ridden personal habits, he hasn’t been getting out much. Other than trips to the gym and weekly appointments with Holdo, one might say he hasn’t been getting out at all.  

Poe notices. Of course he does.

Poe’s still a shit-stirrer, still a meddler, and somehow, even now, still always manages to get his way.

“Come on, Ben,” Poe says, leaning against the doorway to Ben’s room, arms crossed. “Join the campaign. It’ll be good to have someone who knows the rules there. Who can help the other players out. I haven’t DM’d in years. Literal, actual _years_.”

Ben frowns down at the computer in his lap. “You said that the Tico sisters and that one guy you like have played before.”

“ _Finn_ has played before, yes,” Poe allows, pointedly emphasizing the man’s name. “And so has Rose. Paige might join in a couple of sessions from now, but she’s been traveling for work a lot recently, and no one wants to throw Skype in the mix with how much it cuts out when—”

“I don’t see why you need me, then,” Ben interrupts, his frown slowly morphing into an insistent scowl. He knows what Poe’s doing. Poe knows he knows, too.  

Like that’s ever stopped him before.

“They haven’t played in forever, and even then, I don’t think any of them have played a campaign that got above level six. They’re essentially new to it. And their roommate hasn’t played at all.”

Ben grunts, maybe even in acknowledgment, but he doesn’t look up. Instead, he opens another email. Diligently begins to read it, despite the client’s apparent aversion to grammar and punctuation and total, absolute _sense_.

Poe is undeterred.

“Look,” he tries again, “I’d appreciate it if you came, even just for the first session or two. We can kill your character off or have them leave the party later or whatever you want. Just stick around until I get my sea legs back, so to speak. You might even enjoy it—god forbid.”

Ben huffs.

Manipulative. Articulate. Charismatic.

Poe’d always played the party face when they were younger. His tactics are nothing Ben isn’t used to. His motives are nothing Ben can’t see right through.

Still. 

Still, Poe somehow always manages to get his way.

“Fine,” Ben says, shutting his laptop with an audible snap and feeling his pride get caught somewhere in its swinging hinges. “But I call dibs on the Paladin, okay?”

It isn’t a question.

Poe nods like it is anyway.

 

*

 

If Ben’s honest, and he’s trying his hardest nowadays to be honest, the prospect of getting a second chance with this character is more than a little appealing. He can start Kylo off from level one again. It’s a blank slate. A factory reset. How often are people allowed those kinds of do-overs in life?

He could make different choices. Pursue different paths. Develop and grow and maybe not fuck it all up so much this time.  

Sure, starting with a measly nine hit points instead of one-hundred-twenty-something will likely throw him somewhat, at least initially. But it’s also compelling, that kind of new beginning. Harrowing, in a way. 

Poe has told him something of the backwater town they’d start off in, he’s supposedly got a campaign opener planned that for once _doesn’t_ involve starting in a tavern, and Ben’s looking forward to it. Is excited, even.

As he knocks on the front door, that’s what he tells himself. It’s excitement, not nerves.

Excitement, not nerves.

Excitement. Not nerves.  

The door swings open.

“Hi there, I’m Rey! So glad you could make it over!”

Jesus.  

Fuck.

Nerves.

Definitely nerves.

The woman in the doorway is brown-haired and beautiful. Disarmingly so, wearing a light green sweater, cut off shorts, and one of the widest, most genuine smiles Ben has ever seen. People don’t just smile like that, and certainly not at Ben. They just don’t.  

Oh god. Dimples.

She has dimples.

_Fuck_.

What was he even doing here?

Ben furrows his brow, attempting to hard restart his brain.  

Helping. With D&D. He’s supposed to be helping with D&D. And helping _her_ especially.

He pushes his dumb glasses back, condensation from the beer he’d purchased for everyone trailing up the bridge of his nose, making him wince somewhat.

“Accents aren’t recommended for first time players, you know.”

There. Helpful. 

The accent hadn’t been _bad_. It’d been rather good, in fact. Cute, even, some kind of muddled British thing. But still. It’s distracting. Would be a distraction. From gameplay.

The smile drops off her face, and its absence becomes its own kind of presence, one Ben can’t quite wrap his mind around. Rey blinks at him, mouth gaping slightly.

Just as Ben is about to say something else, Poe materializes behind him like an apparition, smacking the back of his head, _hard_.

In another life, Ben’s fist would’ve already connected with Poe’s face by now, perhaps even more than once, but now as he staggers slightly forward, his hands don’t even clench.

“That’s her actual accent, dumbass,” Poe says, tone exasperated yet oddly affectionate.  

“Oh,” Ben replies, like an idiot would, and feels his ears go hot.  

They must be close to pink, he thinks, with how much they’re burning; thank fucking _god_ his hair is long enough to cover them now, unlike in high school, when they’d served as signposts for his every wayward, consuming emotion.

Unaware of Ben’s pathetic internal spiraling, Poe just tsks and breezes on by, shoulder bumping Ben’s arm, lips kissing Rey’s cheek, before continuing on down the hallway with a confidence that's frankly staggering in its understated familiarity.

Rey spares him one last inscrutable glance, then turns, and Ben lets out a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding.

Excitement. Not nerves. _Right_.

Who does he think he’s kidding?

Ben shuts the door behind him, the latch catching quietly, and takes a deep breath.

“Alright, nerds,” he hears Poe call. “Let’s play some D&D!”

Ben squares his shoulders, exhaling. _That’s_ something he’s good at, at least.

 

*

 

Ben’s on his second beer. Already. Before they’ve even sat down at the table.  

It’s his favorite, and seasonal, and only available at one bottle shop in town. He’d brought it today as an icebreaker of sorts. An offering, perhaps, or a crutch. _Here is a thing that I like. Maybe you’ll like it too?_

It turns out Poe isn’t drinking tonight, though. And Finn isn’t a big fan of hops. Rose, apparently, has just opened her own drink, but maybe next time?

He doesn’t offer one to Rey. Doesn’t get the chance.

“Let’s circle up around the table, team. For _real_ this time. No more snack breaks and catch-ups before we’ve even gotten started. The pizza’s here, so no more excuses.” 

Ben rolls his eyes at the voice Poe’s thrown on, at the act he’s putting together, but maybe he also shakes his head somewhat as he sits down at the table, a small amount of residual fondness for the man leaking through.  

Ben scoots his chair a little, adjusting it. He straightens his brand new 5e handbook, his dice tray, his notebook. He looks around. The others at the table are apparently fond of his friend, too, and are a lot more open with their affection, all bright eyes and quirking lips and shared comradery. They look eager. Excited for what’s to come.

Ben straightens his character sheet. His shoulders. His pencil.

And the story begins.

 

*

 

Finn’s character is ex-military. A former government recruit who no longer believes in the cause. Perhaps never did.

It’s a bit tired, really.

“So you’re a traitor, then?” Ben asks in Kylo’s slightly deeper, emotionless voice. “A deserter in the desert?”

Finn bristles. “ _No_ ,” he protests emphatically. “I’m not— _that_. I’m just a person. I’m just trying to make my own way.”

Something about that resonates with Ben. He nods. “That’s... respectable, I suppose.” He turns to Rose. “And you?”

“I’m not anyone important,” Rose says quickly in a quiet-sounding voice. “My name’s Hays. I like books. I like to read. I like to fix things, on occasion. Help out where I can.” 

“I’m sure you’ll have your uses,” he says magnanimously. A wizard was great, actually. Would provide much-needed utility to the party, assuming they could keep her alive long enough for her to gain access to some of the really decent spells.

“FN-2187,” Ben starts, turning again to Finn.

“ _Seven_ ,” Finn insists. “My friends call me Seven.”

“FN-2187,” Ben repeats. “What can you tell me about the girl? The scavenger in the tattered monk vestiges.”

“Kira?” Finn replies, sounding vaguely annoyed. “ _She’s_ a friend. She’s here to help us on our search.”

“Is that so?”

_Doubtful_ , he thinks, in Kylo Ren’s voice.

It’s coming back to him now. The character. He’s slipping into it so quickly.

Over to the side, Rey is diligently observing the entire conversation. He can feel the weight of her sharp brown eyes, can see them cataloguing every nuanced exchange. After a second, her hand shoots out, snatching another piece of pizza from the half-empty box. She eats the entire greasy slice in five bites, like a person starving. Like an actual scavenger might.

Unlike Finn and Rose, even when she’s not in the scene, she’s staying immersed. Staying in character.  

Rey _gets_ it. She’s serious, too.

“It _is_ so,” Finn says, pulling Ben back to the table. “Kira’s great. You’ll realize that when you meet her.”

Ben scowls for Kylo. “Looking forward to it,” he says in a rumbling, sardonic voice.  

But really—he is.

 

*

 

Ben has missed this.

The character, the story, the game. The thrillingly unpredictable confluence of skill and luck.

Of playing with other people. That’s better than he’s remembered, too.

Eventually, it becomes quite clear that Poe has paired Finn with Rose and Ben with Rey. At least initially, for their beginning character interactions. Likely, it has something to do with their experience at roleplaying. Poe thinks Ben can help her. Can guide her along through the narrative.

He can. But he finds he doesn’t need to do much.

Rey’s struggling a bit with the mechanics of the game, which Ben doesn’t begrudge her—there’s a learning curve to it, certainly—but she’s a natural roleplayer. An amazing one.  

She doesn’t seem to think out her responses so much as live them. He acts; she reacts. It’s immediate. _Natural_.  

Maybe that’s why he forgets himself—forgets that this is supposed to be a _new_ Kylo, forgets he shouldn’t fall too deeply, too fast, into an already established character.  

But there it is. The drive to need, the drive to know. To rise and respond.

“I touch Kira on the cheek, using one point from my healing pool to bring her back to consciousness.”

Poe doesn’t even get to nod.  

Rey’s brown eyes blink, and she jerks, as if actually waking. She gnashes her teeth, grinding them. “Where are we?” she snarls. “Where are the others? Why do you have me here?”  

A thrill shoots through Ben. A spark.  

“I think you know.” 

“Take off the mask,” Rey spits in Kira’s fiery, defiant voice. “I’m not talking to you like this.” 

Ben almost smiles. She’d remembered. Remembered the mask from his character description earlier.  

He mimes taking off Kylo’s helm, and he sees Rey’s eyes widen. In fear. In intrigue.

A natural. She’s a _natural_.

“Tell me about the automaton,” he says.

“It’s a BB-unit with a—”

“It’s carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire, but—”

“Why are you doing this?” she asks.

He leans forward. His stomach digs into the wooden table, but he doesn’t feel it—it’s distant, separate, apart.

“You’re so lonely,” he says softly, pulling on the information he’d gleaned from Poe’s text. “So afraid to leave. At night, desperate to sleep.”

Rey turns from him abruptly, chin up, blinking furiously.

In his periphery, he sees Finn puff up, full of hot air and rabid protests. Sees Rose reach out a tentative hand to grasp Rey’s own—reach out, _distracting_ her.

“I know you’ve seen the map,” he continues.

“You can’t think I’d actually tell you,” Rey says fiercely, still staring off into the distance. “Tell you and ever work with you again.” 

“Yes, but I don’t think you’re planning on working with us at all. I don’t think you have any intention of leaving. Which is a pity. Because, as I’ve said, _I know you’ve seen the map_. And now you’ll give it to me.”

“I’m not going to give you _anything._ ” 

Ben leans forward further still. “We’ll see,” he says meaningfully. And then—his eyes flick to Poe.

He could go with Persuasion, but Strength is his highest stat, and narratively... narratively it works better this way.

“Intimidate?” he asks, but it’s a rhetorical formality. The d20 is already in his hand. 

Finn and Rose both interject again, and loudly, like they can’t keep their mouths shut, but Ben willfulfully tunes them out. They’re breaking up the narrative. Disrupting the rapport. Kylo and Kira—they have something, newly wrought but forming. He can feel it. Rey must, too.   

Poe nods—but when Ben rolls, it doesn’t go as he’d imagined. It’s a confluence of skill _and_ luck, and the dice gods are cruel. He scowls down at the six, face twisting. There’s no way that’s high enough, even with his best modifier.

It isn’t.

“Rey,” Poe begins, “you can tell Kylo is sincere, passionate, maybe even a little desperate, but as he leans forward, you sense something. See something in his eyes, and you are not afraid.” 

Rey takes this information in and responds immediately.

“I lean forward—” and here she actually leans forward “—I pull against my restraints—” and here she mimes straining against the rope “—I look into his eyes—” and here... here she mimes nothing; she’s staring into Ben, hazel eyes fiery and defiant and sparking with anger. Ben feels his chest expand, his heart beat faster, and he doesn’t look away, _can’t_ look away, not even for a second. “ _Insight check_ ,” she says, and her voice slaps him and her eyes narrow and—

And Finn busts out laughing.  

Ben blinks.  

Finn is still laughing, but Rey is also still staring. Hasn’t looked away either, even to glance at Poe.

“Roll a d20, Rey,” Poe says with unconcealed amusement, and Ben turns, glowering as he takes in Poe’s expression. It matches his tone. Is the furthest thing from impartial.

When Ben glances back to Rey a mere second later, the immersive moment is gone. She’s got a d20 in her hand—the same blue one from before—and is drawing her pointer finger down her character sheet, likely looking for the proper modifier.

"Wisdom,” Ben supplies, after giving her a second.

Rey shoots him another skewering look. It’s so intense that Ben nearly lifts his hands in supplication. This girl. It’s like she never drops character, and Ben would be smiling if he didn’t want to stay close to Kylo, too.

Rey huffs slightly. Then she throws the die, and everyone in the room leans forward as it clatters, as it rolls.

Her eyes finally leave Ben’s. There’s a breath. A beat. Another. 

“Natural twenty,” she says eventually, as if she can’t quite believe it, and then she smiles widely again for the first time since the doorway. It’s beautiful, and it’s charming, and for one brief moment, Ben is struck, again, just as powerfully as the first time. Worse, somehow.  

His eyes are wide. His collar is suddenly much too tight.

His DM is laughing, openly and loud.

Ben swings his head around, furious. _“Don’t_ ,” he starts. “Poe, don’t you _dare_ —”

Poe laughs again, close to cackling. “Oh, Ben. Oh, Benny Benny boy. Turnabout is fair play, my friend.” 

Off to either side of him, Finn and Rose are laughing, too, Rose jostling Rey on the shoulder, Finn calling her that damn Peanut nickname again, and Ben’s ears are as hot as they’ve been all night, and he’s glaring, and he can’t take it. He can’t fucking take it.  

Poe laughs. _Again_. “Rey, what’s your modifier?”

“Five,” she says lightly, in that terribly distracting lilt of an accent.

Ben is stunned. “ _Five?”_ he repeats softly, gaping.

Five. Twenty- _five_. At level one.

Fuck.

Poe looks close to tears as he pulls out his phone, shoulders shaking with unrestrained mirth. He wipes his eyes with the back of one hand, and Ben knows what Poe’s going to say before he’s finished typing it out. Knows the backstory he’s going to pick.

It’s not fair. It’s too soon. He hasn’t even had a chance to change it yet. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“You _can’t_ —”

“I am,” Poe interrupts, not even looking up from his phone. “You started this, Ben.”

Rey’s brick of a phone dings, and her lightly freckled nose scrunches up as she reads Poe’s text, and Ben can’t look at her anymore. Can’t take it. He’s furious and grasping. Too emotional, _again_.

“Kylo uses the rest of his lay on hands pool to heal Kira,” Ben says roughly. “Then he leaves the fucking room.”

Ben’s own chair jerks back, louder than he’d intended, and Rey’s head snaps up. But Ben is already standing, already moving away.

“Where are you going, Ben?” Poe calls, sounding concerned. Like Ben is _concerning_. Fuck him.

“Bathroom,” he snaps back, a little too sharply.

He stomps down the hallway until he finds a door, but when he wrenches it open it leads to a bedroom, and the next door does, too. When he finally gets to a bathroom, he’s breathing heavily. He’s breathing heavily, and he _knows_ it’s irrational now, knows it’s an overreaction, knows it will pass, but that doesn’t exactly help him deal with it either. Because it’s irrational, but it’s also _real_. And he wants to hit something real, too. Smash his fist through the wall. His knuckles through the glass.

But that’s not a thing he does anymore. Not a thing he’s done for a very long time. So he yanks at the faucet, pretending his hands aren’t shaking, and splashes water on his face instead.

Somewhat desperately, he tries to focus on the here and now. How cool the faux-marble countertop is under his hands. How his hair is brushing softly against his cheeks. How the water is dripping down his nose, around his glasses, off of his chin.

He breathes.

And he breathes.

And he breathes.  

And as he does, he looks at himself in the mirror, chest heaving, unable to think of anything at all for a very long time.

 

*

 

“You do know that shit was uncalled for, right?” Poe says abruptly, breaking a wildly uncomfortable eight minutes of absolute silence.  

Ben’s hands tighten around the steering wheel, knuckles white. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he grits out.

And they don’t.

 

*

 

Until they do.

It’s Wednesday night, and Ben feels like the floor is going to open up and swallow him whole.

No. That’s not quite right.

If only it _would_ open up. Would swallow him and subsequently spare him from having to have this painfully awkward conversation.

“I know neither of us wants to talk about this, but we need to, Ben.” 

Ben shuts the fridge, taking care not to slam it. “We really don’t.”

“We do.”

“We _don’t_ ,” Ben reiterates, frowning as he flips the the chicken breast he's cooking before it burns. He’s not an idiot. He knows Poe timed this all very intentionally. Cornered him in the kitchen when he thought he couldn’t leave. “They don’t want me there. I get it.” 

“Ben, that’s not what I’m—”

“There’s nothing else to say.”

“But that’s not what—”

“I won’t come back.”

“Would you let me fucking speak?”

The chicken sizzles. Oil from the pan pops.

Poe’s face is pinched, close to actual anger. “Well?” his friend presses, dark brows raised.  

Ben brushes a hand out, motioning for Poe to continue as gracefully as he is able, which is to say not gracefully at all. “Go ahead, then,” he grumbles. 

Poe lets out a deep breath, like this is difficult. Like _Ben_ is difficult.

Ben gets it. He’s rude, and he’s overly sensitive, and he’s hard to get along with. He’s been told this all his life. He _knows_ this. Why is everyone else always so surprised?

“I think Kylo has the potential to add a lot of value to the campaign _and_ the party,” Poe says. “I want you there. _They_ want you there—”

_“Ha,”_ Ben scoffs loudly. “Okay.”

“It’s true,” Poe insists.

Ben scoffs again. “Everyone. Really?”

There’s a beat. “Well, maybe not Finn,” Poe allows, tilting his head, “but the others do for sure. Rey does. She said so herself.”

Ben stills. “She did?” he asks, utterly transparent and not able to help it in the slightest.

“Yes,” Poe confirms. “She did. But when you come back, you’re going to have to tone it down, dude. Work _with_ them, not just toward what you think the objective is. It doesn’t matter what Kylo’s alignment is—chaotic evil, lawful asshole, _whatever—_ you can’t attack your own party members. You just can’t.”

Ben’s shoulders stiffen. “I know,” he says, close to mumbling.  

“Good,” Poe says firmly, but he isn’t done. “And as for Rey—I know that she can act, that she was handling herself well, but the girl was blindsided. And, honestly, shook. She hasn’t played before, Ben. Wasn’t expecting it.”

After thirty one years of being a fuck up, Ben hadn't known it was possible to feel like more of a piece of shit. But he does. He really, really does. 

His ears burn. His chest hurts.

He opens his mouth to speak, and finds he can’t.  

“We still want you there, though,” Poe reiterates, before he leaves the kitchen. “Do you hear me, Ben? We still want you there.”

 

*

 

He doesn’t go back for two weeks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the love, everyone. come say hi on [tumblr](http://frak-all.tumblr.com/) or send me d&d references or whatever you like. i have an inkling i'll be hungover as all hell tomorrow, so messages would not go unappreciated.


	3. (charisma check)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s art! I’m shook.
> 
> Lovely aesthetic made by @Erulisse17. 
> 
> I should probably make actual character sheets so I don’t keep contradicting myself seventeen different times, but I’m not gonna enter that new level of meta hell. At least not yet. 
> 
> Thanks for enjoying this nerd premise with me. I’m digging each and every comment/kudo/suggestion. Giving y’all this update, which I’m not sure about, via mobile upload, which I’m also not sure about. Two wrongs make a right, yeah?
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!

It’s Sunday again, and it’s the same as before.

 

The same as before, with one small change: Finn answers the door this time.

 

They don’t discuss it. She doesn’t have to ask. Rey stays seated at the table, and Finn walks down the hallway, and, really, that’s the kind of friends they are. Words don’t begin to cover it.

 

In short order, Finn and Poe emerge, balancing an abundance of DM supplies and two boxes of pizza between them. It’s the local deep dish place, Rey notes even as she pretends to read, not Pizza Hut like when they’d been in charge of the food.

 

She keeps an eye on the hallway, not sure whether Ben bailed again and not sure whether she cares, all the way up until he slinks into the room nearly half a minute later.

 

He’s wearing black on black; expensive, casual clothes that look like a wasted credit card payment. His canvas tote bag is black, too, and dangles in the crook of his elbow, full with what is undoubtedly all of the specialized D&D supplies he’d brought over before. A large blue box is cradled in his arms, and his shoulders are hunched forward, slightly over it.

 

He looks sort of... pathetic, really.

 

It’s not meant as a character assassination. He honestly looks pathetic. He’s ducking down, like he’s trying to make himself smaller. Like he isn’t sure he wants to be here.

 

And he’s failing at it miserably. Doing such a terrible job, looking so conspicuous, that she almost feels bad for him.

 

God, he looks prickly, too. As if he’s more than ready to spook at the slightest provocation.

 

Like a cat, Rey thinks. And continues thinking, until his cautious eyes meet hers.  

 

Some emotion must flit across her face. She’s never been the best at hiding her feelings, so surely something slips through. But whatever it is, whatever it says, there’s no way it comes close to the expressive look that wreaks havoc across his pale face.

 

Rey tilts her chin, considering it, and in response, Ben winces. Almost grimaces.

 

He feels bad, she realizes.

 

 _Good_.

 

It’s a small but vicious thought. One Rey can’t make herself feel guilty for having.

 

She can’t make herself look away, either. She refuses to so much as blink, as if this is a challenge, and holds his gaze without flinching.

 

Ben swallows, fidgeting with the box—of beer, it looks like—cradling it in his arms. He hefts it slightly.

 

The movement must catch Rose’s eye, because she rushes forward. “Those all for you, Ben?” she asks, just shy of teasing.

 

Ben startles, wrenching his gaze from Rey, before blinking down at Rose, as if he’s surprised to find her there, in her own apartment. “No, uh, I—” he says eloquently. He blinks again, and gestures with the box of beer. “It’s a New Belgium variety pack. I wanted to bring options—for everyone. You know... a variety.”

 

Rose smiles like he’s made a joke. “That was nice of you,” she says, raising her voice.

 

Behind her, Finn very pointedly maintains his conversation with Poe.

 

“It was nothing,” Ben replies. Then he pauses, closing his eyes as if reading off a script. “Thank you. For hosting.”

 

Rose smiles again. “Of course,” she says, brushing her hand through the air, and doing all the things Rey could have done the first time around, if things had only gone differently. “We’re happy to. Here, let me take that from you.”

 

Rose moves to their fridge, struggling to find room for the box amidst the groceries, takeaway boxes, Tupperware containers of three moderately responsible adults. There’s a frustrated sigh and a muffled curse, and, finally, Rose resorts to moving the beers in bottle by bottle.

 

While she does, Ben lingers next to her, his dark brown eyes starting to wander. They move over the open kitchen, hover over Finn and Poe, move over the communal living room space, before finally settling on Rey, like that hadn’t been his original intention all along.

 

He takes a deep breath, as if collecting himself, and—

 

And Rey looks down. Back to her notes.

 

Ki points mean abilities. Mean complications. Mean combat rounds that she doesn’t quite understand and isn’t sure she’s ready for. It had taken an outrageous amount of time last week, the fighting, despite the fact that each character’s turn somehow only represented six seconds of real time play. Rey doesn’t want to be the one responsible for slowing things down or holding people up; she’d hated that last time, and it’d only been Finn and Rose and Poe around the table. This time...

 

This time would be easier. She’d talked with Poe. She’d written her abilities out on index cards. She’d even reread her section of the Player’s Handbook like it had been a chapter in one of her engineering textbooks.

 

Rey shakes her head and lets out a breath.

 

She’s being dramatic.

 

This time _would_ be easier. Easier and _fun_.

 

D&D is just a game, after all, albeit a complicated one.

 

She looks up.

 

Ben is still standing near Rose, who looks like she’s trying to coax a conversation out of him. It must not be too engrossing, though, because his eyes find Rey’s immediately, as if he’d never once looked away. But when she tilts her head just then, he does looks away, down at the floor briefly, before his eyes find hers again.

 

Skittish, that’s the word. Maybe even abashed.

 

(Awkward as well, but that’s not new.)

 

Poe must have really talked with him about the last time he was here, and that conversation couldn’t have been easy.

 

Yet he’d still come back. Wanted to try again.

 

So maybe Rey smiles at him, briefly. And maybe Ben smiles back, tentatively.

 

And, yeah.

 

Maybe it would be easier this time around.

  
  
  


 

  
  
  


They fan out around the table in a way that feels oddly ceremonial.

 

The table is circular, yet Poe’s seat is undeniably the head. Next to his Poe is Finn, then Rose, then Rey, then, and finally, Ben.

 

Despite the unspoken interaction she’d just had with Ben, the overall atmosphere is—not great.

 

Not hostile. Not terrible. But definitely not great.

 

Rey wouldn't know the first place to start, but Poe merely grins, as if he plans to beat back the palpable tension with the sheer force of his personality.

 

“Okay,” he says, cracking open his beer with an opener on his keyring. “Who can summarize what happened last session? Ben, what’ve you got for me?”

 

Rey can practically _feel_ Ben stiffen.

 

There’s a beat. Then another.

 

“No?” Poe says. “Nothing? _Nada?_ ” He takes a short, exaggerated slurp of his beer. He scans the table and pauses. “Bueller?” Another pause. “ _Bueller?_ ”

 

Finn snorts, rolling his eyes. “Bueller,” he says back. And the tension, for the most part, snaps.

 

“Alright, Finn, let’s hear it.”

 

Finn drums his fingers on the table. “Well, for starters, we decided to move forward with the piece of the map,” he says, using the royal “we” quite kindly, which Rey is grateful for; it’d been Kira who’d finally fessed up to Hays and Seven about the map while “Kylo” had been on watch. “Then we hitched it to the coast and, uh,” Finn coughs, “borrowed an old ship.”

 

Rose nods, chiming in. “And later got boarded by its original owners.”

 

“And we met an awesome old crone,” Finn says.

 

“Gnome,” Rose corrects. Hays is a gnome, and proud.

 

“Gnome crone,” Finn allows, grinning slightly. “Some kind of fighter slash diviner slash badass pirate queen.”

 

“Awesome,” Poe says, then he turns and points at Rey with his beer. “Rey, what else?”

 

Her fingers curl around her now-sweating IPA, and she resists the urge to look at her notes.

 

She clears her throat. “Well, the Pirate Queen’s fortress got invaded by goblins. And we had to sneak out, and then someone failed their stealth roll, so we had to fight some, too.”

 

Rose and Finn nod, and share a conspiratorial smile with her. The fight had been fun, all three of them working together.

 

She continues. “We ended up taking out a bugbear, and when Kira searched its body, we came across a letter demanding that its band report to the Unknown Regions. That a necromancer was about to commence with some horrible, world-ending summoning spell. So we decided to head toward his lair to destroy the Starkiller Scroll at minimum, and his entire facility if we can.” Rey looks over at Ben and adds, “Kashyyyk and Vykk Draygo, the original ship owners, are coming with us.”

 

Ben doesn’t seem to take in that information, though. “Do you mean his _phylactery_?” he asks abruptly. Or maybe corrects abruptly. It’s so hard to tell with him, but Rey is trying her best to give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

That said, she doesn’t actually know what a phylactery is, so she turns to Finn and Rose for confirmation. Thankfully, they don’t make her wait long.

 

“Yeah,” Rose says. “We think so, anyway. Supposedly there’s a window of time where the necromancer won’t actually be there, where we can destroy the scroll he’s working on, and his method of regeneration, and get out.”

 

A pencil is in Ben’s hand, but he hasn’t even begun to write. “That sounds like... a lot,” he says evenly.

 

“It’s risky, definitely,” Rose confirms. “But worth it. The map is meaningless if the world ends before we can do anything about it.”

 

“No, uh, I meant the material. It sounds like you covered a lot of narrative last week.”

 

“They did,” Poe says, sounding put-upon. “Eight hours worth.”

 

“ _Eight_?” Ben nearly chokes. “Eight hours?”

 

The look Finn gives Ben is probably uncalled for. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

 

Ben stills, and Rey can feel the tension start to thicken in the air again, ready to snap back into place. It is absolutely not the way she wants the rest of her evening. Not after she’s carved out all this time. Not after she’s decided to enjoy it.

 

She rolls up her character sheet, leans halfway across the table, and pops Finn on top of the head with it, like it’s an old newspaper.

 

“So let’s have fun,” she says.

 

And for awhile, they do.  

  
  


 

 

  
  


There’s a time-jump. Or there should be, anyway, according to Ben.

 

The group has to cover several days worth of travel by ship in order to make it to the Unknown Regions. Rey’d assume that they’d have faster than light travel or something similar in a world where goblins and necromancers and warlocks run amok, but Poe nixes that thought immediately. He isn’t a big fan of those kinds of narrative shortcuts, apparently. He thinks that “boring” travel days can actually lead to some of the most interesting character development.

 

And he’s kind of right. Some party progress is certainly made, in-game and out.

 

Hays and Seven kick them off by having a great in-character chat about responsibility and heroism and doing what’s right.

 

Kylo stops calling Seven by his former military service identification number, and on the real world side of things, Finn stops sending Ben dirty looks, especially after Rey rolls up her character sheet and mimes hitting him with it again, and that’s not bad, either.  

 

Hays—and by extension, Rose—is an absolute joy, to the surprise of no one. Kira never seems to get much in-game contact with her, but Rey adores sharing the table with them both.

 

The most progress of all, though, comes from Ben. Because, strange as it may be, he’s something approaching _nice_. At least to her.

 

He gets up from the table just as she’s finished her drink and offers to get her another beer. He doesn’t interrupt her when she takes more than a handful of seconds to remember whether Stealth uses Wisdom or Dexterity. He does, however, congratulate her when she rolls a natural nineteen for her Perception check while it’s her turn on watch. More than all that, though, he apologizes for tying Kira up.

 

Well, it’s in-game, so _Kylo_ apologizes, not Ben. And maybe the word apology is a bit of a stretch, because he says, _I should not have tied you up. Forgive me_ , in a stilted voice while they’re sharing watch, like it’s an order instead of a request.

 

Kira chooses to accept it, though. And Rey does, too.

  
  
  


 

  
  
  


“Seven’s investigation check yields fruitful rewards,” Poe says, handing Finn a large, folded up sheet of paper.

 

Finn unfolds and inspects the paper silently, keeping it up close, inches from his nose. After what feels like a solid minute, he lowers the paper. The grin that spreads across his face is nothing short of devious.

 

“What is it?” Rey asks, eagerly, reaching for the sheet with grease-stained fingers. “Give it here.”

 

“Uh-uh.” Finn clutches the paper to his chest and wriggles his eyebrows. “Kira doesn’t know about this,” he teases.

 

Ben shifts in his chair for what seems like the thirtieth time that afternoon. “It’s another map,” he says quietly, turning his head to look down at Rey.

 

Rey grins, excited. She wipes her fingers on her jean shorts and looks at Finn. “Well, is it?” she asks.

 

Finn jabs his own finger in Ben’s direction. “Meta-gaming isn’t fun for anyone,” he scolds, but it’s with a fraction of his usual heat.

 

Ben rolls his eyes. Almost in good humor.

 

Rey’s jaw drops a little, and she shares a silent, slightly bewildered look with Rose. Neither of them are going to risk ruining this fledgling rapport by doing something as dumb as pointing it out, but holy shit.

 

Holy shit, if the guys are getting along, this could work.   

 

A second later, Finn plops the paper down on the table, spreading it out with a sweeping gesture. The paper is large and gridded and surprisingly intricate.

 

It is, indeed, a map. Of the whole damn base.

 

They all eagerly lean over to check it out, even Ben, and Rey can’t help it. She gasps.  

 

“This is _really_ cool, Poe,” she says, because it is. “It’s like a blueprint.”

 

The prop lends a weird sense of validity to what she’d been thinking of as make believe, and the fact that Poe’d obviously spent a decent amount of time crafting it and thinking it through and planning it all out is something Rey appreciates more than she can say. Time is precious, and he’s spending his time on them.

 

Poe winks at her, accepting and deflecting, but she tells him how awesome it is one more time, because he deserves to know. She can’t control whether he believes her or not, but she means it.

 

Then she turns her attention back to the map, scrutinizing it. She draws her finger down to where they need to go.

 

Rey furrows her brow. “Okay, so if we sneak in here, past whatever guards are posted, we can keep the high ground while Hays goes up to the final chamber to destroy the Starkiller Scroll with a Fireball.”

 

“Fire Bolt,” Rose corrects kindly, “but yeah. That seems like a good plan.”

 

Over to her left, Ben shuffles in his seat, _again_ , distracting Rey, _again_.

 

It’s not that she ever forgets he’s there, because he’s much too large for that, but there have been points today when he’s really started to remind her—of how much of a presence he has, of what sharing table space with him means—and it’s... well, it’s a lot.

 

Ben’s shifts yet another time, but he’s frowning now. “So we’re really doing this?” he asks in his voice, not Kylo’s. “Storming a necromancer’s phylactery in the second session?”

 

“Third,” Finn says.

 

Ben’s frown is even more intense. “What?”

 

“ _Third_ session,” Finn corrects, not unkindly. “And we have to. Like Rose said, there’s no use proceeding with the other map if we’re all going to die first.”

 

Ben lets out a long breath. Maybe in acknowledgment, maybe in dissent. “It just sounds like a TPK waiting to happen.”

 

Rey doesn’t know what that means, and she doesn’t like that she doesn’t know, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.

 

Rose sighs impatiently. “We’re not going to go in guns blazing. We’re not going to try to clear out a whole necromancer’s lair. We’ll be stealthing in, mostly. I’ll be wearing a disguise. And we’ve got two rogues who’re gonna help us, plus some added bonuses from the Pirate Queen.”

 

Ben’s frown is so deep at this point that Rey’s afraid it’s going to permanently mar his face. Without thinking much, she kind of nudges his shoulder.

 

“I think it’s a good idea,” she says. “And we kind of have to, anyway.”

 

Ben gives her a long, inscrutable look. “We don’t have to do anything,” he says, and Rey feels a short swoop of disappointment, but before she can fall too far, Ben sighs, shaking his head.

 

“If we’re going to do this, Kylo’s Channel Divinity can help with the undead. It allows him to sense them, and push a few back, if necessary.”

 

“Oh, that’s awesome! I didn’t know you could do that. So the little undead clones are afraid of you?” Rey asks.

 

Ben huffs out something approximating a laugh. “Sure. Something like that.”

 

Rey claps her hands and turns to the rest of the table. “Teamwork makes the dream work, everyone!”

 

“Hell yeah it does!” Finn says, reaching out a fist for her to bump. “Let’s do this.”

 

Ben is nowhere near as enthusiastic as Finn, or even Rose, but his eyes keep flicking back to her and he sends her another one of his small, close-lipped smiles, and, sure, all in all, the table isn’t as relaxed as it had felt last week, but there’s also an air of dynamism they didn’t have before. It’s not a bad trade off, to tell the truth.

 

She thinks that maybe they’ll eventually work well together. That maybe the first session had just been a misunderstanding.

 

Then Poe opens his mouth.  

  
  
  


 

  
  
  


Poe has a talent for characters.

 

She’s always known him to be the dramatic sort, but the past week, he’d introduced a whole host of NPCs, all with different facial tics and personas and voices. And he’d switched between them so quickly, without much apparent effort, as if pulling on a memory instead of writing fiction as he went. Creepy little goblin grunt one second, then the more fearsome than is supposedly normal for a firbolg Kashyyyk the next.

 

It’d been incredible last session. And when Poe really gets going today, after they get off the ship and start stealthing into lair, it’s still incredible.

 

It’s still incredible all the way up until Poe calls Kylo kid in a familiar gruff-sounding voice. The unmistakable voice of Vykk, the NPC Rey’d been planning on creating her first in-game bond with.

 

And then it’s not incredible at all. It’s fucking terrible.

 

Ben hears it, and _boom_. Switched flipped. Dice thrown. Greatsword through the gut.

 

So, yeah.

 

Yeah, she’d been wrong today.

 

Yeah, when people show you who they are, you believe them the first time.

 

Yeah, she’s going to kill him.

 

Kylo Ren, obviously, not Ben Solo.

 

Though at the moment she can’t quite tell the difference. She just sees red.

 

“You can’t _do_ that!” she nearly screams.

 

Ben is pale, and quivering, and damn near irate. “I already did,” he replies stiffly.

 

“Then take it back!” Rey demands, even as she goes for her d20, the lucky light blue one she’s taken to calling her own. “You don’t know this guy. You weren’t here last time. He’s here for us. He’s  _helping_ us!”

 

A muscle throbs in Ben’s cheek, and Rey doesn’t understand it. How he’d gone from fine to furious so fucking fast.

 

“Oh, I know a lot more than you think,” Ben says in that condescending voice of his. The one that makes Rey want to scream and gnash her teeth at him. But Ben isn’t looking at her. His attention is all on Poe, and he’s seething. “And I don’t retcon things,” he spits.

 

Rey lets out a guttural, frustrated noise. “I don’t know what that means!”

 

Ben doesn’t look away from Poe. “It’s when someone—”

 

“Oh my god!” she shouts. “I don’t care!”

 

She wants to tear her hair out. She wants to tear _his_ hair out.

 

She glances around the table to see if anyone else is as affected as she is, but Rose is slack-jawed, and Finn looks mad as hell, and she can’t even begin to describe the expression on Poe’s face.

 

Not just her, then. Somehow, it doesn’t help as much as she thought it would.

 

As opposed to the first session, Ben seems all too aware of the table’s hostility—not that it stops him in the least. He gets defensive. Leans into it.

 

“I’ve already hit him. I’ve already rolled for damage. Just let me know when it’s my next turn, because I’m going to use my action to shove him off the fucking bridge.”

 

“Ben,” Poe says quietly. Then winces, as if he’d stepped on stepped on something. “We really can move on with the scene.”

 

Ben just glares. “I shove him. Strength sixteen.”

 

Poe hesitates, hand in the air, but Ben shakes his head roughly. “Fucking do it, man. You already did.”

 

Reluctantly, Poe turns, and there’s the sound of dice clanking behind his DM screen. “What’s Kylo’s AC?”

 

“Fifteen without the shield,” Ben eeks out through clenched teeth.

 

Poe closes his eyes. “Kira, you see Kylo’s sword pierce through the back of your new friend, gutting him, then watch as he’s flung over the bridge, a pitifully small figure that only gets smaller and smaller, before he’s gone entirely, eaten up by the abyss below.”

 

Rey’s hands are gripping the side of the table. She doesn’t know this guy. Ben Solo. Kylo Ren. Vykk Draygo. She doesn’t know any of them. Somehow, she still feels fucking betrayed.

 

Somehow, Poe still isn’t done.

 

“To your side, there’s a heart-wrenching scream. It’s warbling and pained and furious, and faster than you would’ve thought possible, Kashyyyk draws his crossbow and points it straight at Kylo.” Poe shakes his head, and rolls what sounds like two more dice. “Pheft,” he says, miming the sound of the firing crossbow. “Kylo, you take six damage from a crossbow bolt to the gut, plus three additional sneak attack damage.”

 

Ben looks ready to hit something. “I retreat,” he says, teeth still clenched. “I find cover.” He shifts again, like he has all night, but it’s different this time. His chair jerks back, and Rey doesn’t think.

 

Her hand shoots out to grab Ben’s wrist right as he starts to stand. Menacingly, she spits, “I follow.”

  
  
  


 

 

  
  


“You guys, I like to let my players have autonomy and all, but this is—”  

 

“No.” Rey says. “You let him kill Vykk, you’re letting me do this.”

 

Rose leans over, whispering,  “Rey, is this really—”

 

“ _No_.”

 

She’s doing this. She’s ready.

 

She’s gonna have this fight.

 

But Ben is—silent. Fuming. He isn’t looking at her or at Poe or at anything at all but his character sheet, and if magic were real, that miserable piece of paper as well as their whole damn apartment would likely be up in flames by now. But it’s not. It’s not real.

 

It feels real.

 

The dice hit the table with a resounding clank.

 

Her fists clench.

 

“Nine,” she grits out. Miss.

 

Poe sighs. “In the cold, snowy forest, Kira is so overcome with rage and hurt that she—”

 

“You don’t need to fucking narrate it!” she spits.

 

“Okay, okay,” Poe says, holding up his hands. “Look, I know I fucked up, I just—”.

 

“You fucked up?” Rey laughs. “He fucked up,” she says, gesturing at Ben, the guy right next to her, the guy she’d jostled earlier, smiled at earlier, and the one she wants to throttle now. She turns to him. “I missed. What are you doing with your six seconds? Because I’m not going to miss with my next turn.”

 

Ben ignores her. Just sits there and breathes. Deep inhales. Ragged exhales.

 

He breathes, and he breathes, so she jabs his shoulder with her pointer finger, hard.

 

“Well?” she asks.

 

“I’m not going to attack you,” he says, finally. He inhales again.

 

“You did it the first time.”

 

He exhales. “I was wrong the first time.”

 

“No,” Rey says. “You were wrong to kill Vykk.” She turns to Poe. “Has it been six seconds?”

 

Poe looks at Ben, but the tall terror of a man just keeps breathing. An inordinate amount of time passes before Poe says, “Yeah, it has.”

 

Rey picks up her dice and all but throws them.

 

“Natural nineteen,” she says, and Ben is expressionless. “And I’m using the katana I got from the Pirate Queen, so I crit on a nineteen,” she says, and Ben doesn’t flinch. “And I’m aiming right for his goddamn face,” she says, and Ben turns to her. Just in time for her to look him in the eye when she tells him, “Ten damage.”

 

And Ben just—takes it.

 

He’s staring at her, and even through the anger, through the maddening rush of spite, an odd part of her is feeling like she’s looking at him for the first time.

 

He exhales again, weakly this time. “I’m sorry I ruined your game. And I’m sorry I lost my temper.” He stands abruptly, almost knocking over a half-empty beer bottle. “Kylo is at one hit point, but you can do what you want with him. This won’t happen again.”

 

He flees. They hear the front door shut.  

 

Poe’s head hits the table.

 

“God, I fucked that one up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that this really needs mentioning, but Vykk Draygo is one of Han Solo’s aliases, Kashyyyk is the planet Chewie is from, the Pirate Queen is obviously Maz, and (because I missed it last time) Hays Minor is the homeworld of the Tico sisters. 
> 
> Re: DND references  
> TPK is when an entire party dies, usually in one encounter.  
> Meta-gaming is when a player acts on information their character shouldn’t/wouldn’t know.  
> Retconning is taking back something that’s been done in-game.  
> AC is a character’s armor class. Attack rolls go directly against AC for the most part. The higher the number, the harder it is to hit that character.
> 
> And IDK. There’s probably more. Let me know if you have questions.

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone mentions it, no, an insight check would not reveal a Jedi mind probe amount of information, but I wanted these trash babies to start at level one, so.
> 
> Also, totally open to D&D references and suggestions if you'd like to see something specific included. Just hit me up in the comments.


End file.
